


A Rock and a Hard Place

by bellatemple



Series: Companions [5]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Episode Related, Episode: s4e11 And the Trial of One, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Self-Harm, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13555149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: Set during the final scenes of episode 4x11, Stone tries to deal with everything that has happened. It doesn't go well.





	A Rock and a Hard Place

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final (probably) part of my "Companions" series, and fair warning, it's almost entirely introspection. I knew as soon as I made this a series that I was going to end it with a solo Stone story, but I kiiiiinda thought it'd be a little lighter than this? But hey, when canon gives you piles of angst, sometimes you've just got to roll around in it like the gross-ass dog you are. 
> 
> Anyway, canon better fix itself right quick next week or I'm going to have to start setting every fic mid-fourth season and pretend the rest never happened. Who's with me?

There were dozens of little tucked away corners and hiding spots in the Library, and in four years of exploring, Jake was pretty sure he knew them all. He headed for the most out of the way one he could think of when he stormed out of the office, not because he thought Jones and Cassandra and Baird wouldn't know them all too, but so they'd know to leave him alone. The three of them had developed a terrible habit of wanting to _talk_ , lately, and after today — after this whole goddamn year — he wasn't in the mood. 

His tattoo itched, a ghost of the agony from the nightmare the Library had put him through, and he practically tore at it with his fingers. What had become a nervous habit since Shangri-La exploded into something destructive; if he hadn't been the sort to keep his fingernails trimmed short, he'd be ripping through his own skin. 

Not that it mattered. It was what he deserved, today. It was the _least_ of what he deserved. He could have taken himself out on the testing grounds, instead of asking Baird to do it. Of course she wouldn't do it; she could never, no more than he could have killed the other two. But they'd asked him anyway, and even knowing how much that hurt, he'd turned around and done the same to Baird. Or he could have resisted the nightmare better, let the witch ( _Cassandra_ ) and her servant ( _Ezekiel_ ) have their damn way with him instead of taking the easy way out. 

And he definitely shouldn't have trusted Cassandra and read that damn scroll in the first place. 

But he didn't. He didn't do any of that. He'd asked Baird to kill him, and he'd willingly forgotten the others just to spare himself pain, and he'd gone and done a goddamn _magic spell_ despite everything in him that knew better, and now Jenkins was dead. 

A single sob broke free from his chest, though his eyes remained stubbornly dry. Despite the small corner he'd tucked himself into, it echoed. 

He'd watched his mother die, too, years ago. It'd only been the two of them, then, alone in a dark hospital room, while his father drowned himself in a bar across town. She'd been the only person who'd never betrayed Jake, and he'd held her hand and told her it would all be okay and then watched as the doctors pulled the plug on her life support. She'd never regained consciousness, but that didn't matter; he'd still lied to her face. Of all the thousands of lies he'd ever told, big and small, that was the one that hurt him the most. He'd tried so hard to make it up to her in the years that followed, to make it the truth, by sticking around even when the world did everything it could to tempt him to leave. He'd been offered scholarships and interviews everywhere, even that "prestigious position with the Metropolitan Library", and he'd ignored them all to stay and drag his dad back into the world over and over again. He'd made sure the family business stayed afloat, and told himself he was doing the right thing, and kept how much he hated it as the biggest secret of all. The one he kept even from himself. 

And then Baird had shown up, and she'd brought with her an entire world he'd never dared to imagine was real. Part of him thought it was his reward for having given up so much, for having been so good for so long. 

But that was just another lie, wasn't it. Jake's fingernails finally broke the skin, and he hugged his whole arm to his chest when he started to bleed, still trying to calm his raging nerves. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek and pressed his head into the sharp edge of the bookshelf behind him, shifting his weight where he sat to lean into the dull burn in his leg, leftover from Cassandra's trap. With each small pain he hoped for clarity, or at least a distraction from the continuous spinning of his thoughts. 

It never had worked before, though; he wasn't sure why he thought it would start now. 

Part of him had seen all this coming. Not right away, of course, but since one of their earliest cases without Flynn, the little town taken over by fairy tales. That was the first time magic had reached in and _changed_ them, messing with their heads and their bodies both, in such small, insidious ways that none of them even noticed until it was almost too late. Becoming the Huntsman had almost been fun, until the Big Bad Wolf's fist caved in the side of his skull and he'd _known_ , even if just for a moment, that that was where his story ended. A second later and he'd been fine — he'd been a damned robot, but he'd been fine — but he remembered that feeling all the same. He remembered it every time they went out on a case and the magic started to get too close. It was something he feared every single time, though he did his best to make sure no one else knew. And he just kept getting pulled in deeper and deeper, until magic was marked onto his skin and branded onto his very soul.

His nightmare might not have been literal, but it was the truth: being a Librarian wasn't a gift. It was a curse. 

Jenkins would probably be furious with Jake for thinking like that. The Library wasn't about gifts or curses, it was so much larger than that. It was about control, controlling the artifacts and keeping them and the world separate and safe. That was what Jake brought to being a Librarian, not his knowledge and his intellect, though, sure, those helped. Cassandra was enthusiasm, Ezekiel, confidence, and he was control. And the Library had systematically stripped them of all three and told them to destroy each other. And when they didn't, it destroyed Jenkins. 

It didn't make any sense. 

Jake was a man who'd always understood most things, even the ones he didn't like or agree with. But he didn't understand any of this. _Why_ had the Library killed Jenkins? Retribution? They weren't any closer to choosing someone to tether to it; if anything, the idea was more horrifying to Jake now than ever before, and he didn't think Cassandra or Ezekiel felt any differently than he did. So, what? Was it punishing them for failing it? Taunting them? Jake's stomach roiled as he remembered the look on Jenkins' face when he'd thought they'd won. Jake had never seen the man look so happy, so relieved. When the harness came flying through the back door, he must have been terrified, but in the end, with his final breaths, he'd made sure to be so _kind_ — 

Jake slammed his hand into the floor and wished the Library had a face so he could punch it. He wished, more than anything, for a way he could hurt it as much as it had hurt them. Jenkins had never been less than helpful, even in the early days when he resented them all for being there. Jake thought of their conversation, after the confrontation with the Devil, when Jenkins realized why Jake hadn't been able to just lie down and relax, why he couldn't let his guard down even long enough to let his own body recover. Jenkins had _gotten_ it, in a way no one else Jake ever met had, and he didn't hate Jake for it. Didn't berate him or make him feel stupid. He'd just offered a little bit of wisdom and as much space as he could, and let Jake deal with things in his own way. 

There was only one person in Jake's life whom he'd trusted completely, and she'd died when he was just fourteen. After joining the Library, Jake had tried to change, but his new friends still ended up betraying him somehow. Not always deliberately, and they all had their own reasons; he understood that, and he loved them all anyway. But that didn't change the fact that in the end, the only person Jake ever had was himself. He'd started to wonder about Jenkins, though. Not just because of his reputation: Arthur's most noble knight, the only one pure enough to find the Holy Grail; but because he was _Jenkins_. He was frustrating and cantankerous, and god help you if you disagreed with him, but he'd never led them astray. Even on the battlefield, after magic had emptied Jake's head of all his friends and most of his memories, he'd still known he could take Jenkins at his word. If Jenkins said the other two were villains who needed to be stopped, Jake was willing to do whatever he had to to stop them. 

Except it hadn't been Jenkins at all. It'd been the Library. 

And just look at what it had done. 

Jake clasped his hands behind his neck, feeling the sting of the tiny wounds on his arm as they brushed against his shirt. He curled his head down to his knees and wished he still knew how to cry. Cassandra wore her devastation on her face and he knew in his heart she was stronger for it, but all he could squeeze out when he tried was rage. The kind of rage that started fights just to feel his hands hurt. The kind that made him think that if he just pressed hard enough, he could rip off all his skin and start over fresh, untouched and untouchable. It'd been boiling in him for ages now; he wanted to be able to blame it all on the tattoo, a curse, magic in general, but this was all on him. He'd let himself be fooled again. 

Old way's best. 

"Jacob?" Baird called, and Jake knew he needed to answer her because she hadn't called him "Stone". He swallowed, packing up all the anger and grief and fear and locking them down deep in his belly before he finally uncurled and stepped out of his hiding spot. "There you are." She tried for a smile, but none of them would be doing that any time soon. He shoved his hands into his pockets without meeting her eyes and hoped she didn't want to talk. 

She didn't, not for several moments, and when she finally did, it was just: "I'm sorry." Her cheeks were swollen, her eyes glimmering and red. Jake felt a sudden, unreasonable hatred for her. Even Eve Baird, NATO Colonel and professional badass, still knew how to cry. "I know you don't want —" She broke off with a shake of her head and closed her eyes, biting her lower lip. Jake waited. "We need to take care of the body." 

Cassandra and Ezekiel stepped up on either side of her, looking tiny and lost in her shadow. This was it, then. This was all that was left of the dream team that had taken down Dulaque and Prospero, that had won the prophesized war between Good and Evil. 

When the Library wanted to break you, it did it but good. 

"Yeah," Jake said, voice low and half-choked. "I know." 

He'd do this one last thing, then. For the three of them and for Jenkins. 

And then, finally, he'd be done.


End file.
